Ever since Google gobbled up the developers of Sparrow to put them to work on a Gmail app, the future of my favorite iOS email client has been in question, but the lack of iPhone 5 support was a particularly hard pill for me to swallow as I reviewed Apple’s latest handset.

Luckily, it appears that while Sparrow may not see many updates going forward, it will get iPhone 5 support, taking full advantage of the 1136 x 640 display.

Thank goodness. When the Sparrow team joined Google, Leca said that the official Sparrow apps were not likely to see updates going forward, and the in-the-works iPad version would probably not be released either. I’d still kill for a proper Sparrow for iPad, but I’ll settle for iPhone 5 support.

I got myself used to Apple Mail on both OSX and iOS. I’ve only used sparrow on OSX, but Apple Mail seems really great. It tends to render emails better and the way it groups conversations is a lot better. The only things I’m really missing is the “mark as unread” shortcut and quick reply (without popping out a new window) in sparrow.

JoachimArt

I bought sparrow but uninstalled it instantly when I heard they were bought by google. Why? Because then I knew you will never get push on sparrow on iphone – which makes it useless. Sparrow should offer people money back for this – I bought it for my phone only because I knew they were working on getting push. OSX Sparrow is still great though, only proper gmail mail client which imports your gmail contacts realtime. I wish Mail would do that, since that software is still in development. Don´t understand why google buys the people but not the software, Sparrow for gmail is a 10 times better startingpoint for a gmail app than googles native one.

About the author

John Brownlee is a Contributing Editor. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.

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